How much more scumming?

[Magnate]

Keep in mind that Heal also has a not-insignificant minimum heal amount of 300HP, while CCW's minimum heal rapidly becomes irrelevant. That said, generally I find that 3CCW > 1 Healing, assuming you have the time. The difference is that Healing potions mean you don't have to bail on your current fight to heal up.

And that last is the crucial point, given that needing to phase away and heal means dealing with whatever's outside your ASC or other chosen combat site. In that last game I had to abandon many fights at that point.

I wasn't entirely serious about selling !heal btw - remember that I hate shopping altogether and therefore don't think terribly carefully about it.

[Timo Pietilä]

No, I save-scummed one winner ten years ago, in my first year of playing, simply because I grew bored with never getting beyond stat gain and wanted to see what the late game was like (pre JLE it was quite boring - all I remember is wall-to-wall black reavers). After that I swore I'd never savescum again, and I haven't - but it's taken me a long time to win. I always played clearing every level (often more than once) until I started diving about three years ago. As soon as I started I found that the faster I dived, the further I got, so I just kept diving faster and faster. This is the result.

So yes, this is my first non-save-scummed win - and only my second legit character to survive past 4000'.

I parse that as "my reason to die previously was boredom, and lose of concentration". Getting winner with that few turns show that you have skill, but the fact that you haven't got winner before shows that you probably take a bit too many risks in a way, and that is why slower style doesn't work for you.

About pre-JLE late game, I wouldn't say it was much more boring than it is now because now balance of power is even more in favor of player. There was few definite improvements like new demons, but also some less good changes like multitude of new boring uniques and crapload of new junk in a way of getting those Woo!-moments.

[Timo Pietilä]

There's no such thing as a crappy weapon with +3 blows!

Your complaint sounds as if you are diving just a little too fast. When diving, you will usually find most of your endgame kit very deep, so that is typical. However, if you are really hurting for equipment on the way down you need to figure out how to kill a bit more.

In addition to that there were one x5 bow into game with immunity, but it wasn't deep item. (max depth was 80 for that bow). I actually complained about that in one of my posts about randarts. Unfortunately that didn't have big damage bonus, so my +1 Lothlorien with 20+ to dam made more damage.

[Magnate]

I parse that as "my reason to die previously was boredom, and lose of concentration". Getting winner with that few turns show that you have skill, but the fact that you haven't got winner before shows that you probably take a bit too many risks in a way, and that is why slower style doesn't work for you.

Yes, your analysis is pretty close to the mark I would guess.

About pre-JLE late game, I wouldn't say it was much more boring than it is now because now balance of power is even more in favor of player. There was few definite improvements like new demons, but also some less good changes like multitude of new boring uniques and crapload of new junk in a way of getting those Woo!-moments.

I've never agreed with you about most of JLE's items - in general I think they did improve the game, but we are still working out some of the consequential balancing issues.

I'm a bit more ambivalent about the JLE uniques - in general I don't think the rewards for killing uniques are high enough, especially as you can win without bothering to kill them. I think we can fix this: monster xp values need reworking thoroughly (JLE's demons and dragons are worth about 10x the equivalent higher undead), and I also think we can do more with drops (d_m had some ideas about this - not sure where he got to but there is potential to have uniques drop things that other monsters simply can't). So I don't think JLE's uniques are any worse than the others, I just think the whole lot need some love.

[ewert]

I don't like the idea of only uniques being able to drop some things, unless those are guaranteed drops. I often farm millions of turns in the end, and the knowledge that I simply could not get some thing at all no matter what after I killed all uniques would bother me. :P

I think indeed a great xp boost to uniques would cause people to hunt them out earlier, when they can take them out but they pose a risk.

[Jungle_Boy]

Congratulations one the win!